Last night's Republican presidential debate was CNN's highest-rated program ever with ~20 million viewers

Republican
U.S. presidential candidate businessman Donald Trump reacts
during the second official Republican presidential candidates
debate of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign at the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library in Simi ValleyThomson Reuters

Thursday's Republican presidential debate will go down as
CNN's highest-rated program ever.

Update: Final ratings numbers came in a bit
higher than the early estimates. TheWrap reports that 22.9 million people
tuned into Thursday's GOP debate. that's still a couple million
less than Fox News Channel's broadcast of the first GOP debate.

Previously:According to early numbers, the
GOP debate scored a 4.7 household rating. That amounts to nearly
20 million viewers for the 3-hour event, according to TheWrap.

Republican
presidential candidate and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly
Fiorina speaks during the second official Republican presidential
candidates debate of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign at the
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi
ValleyThomson
Reuters

Previously, CNN’s all-time high was the 8 million
viewers who watched Barack Obama debate Hillary Clinton in ’08,
reported
Deadline.

CNN's three hour debate had created much buzz before it aired,
because Republican candidate Donald Trump dared the news network
to donate its proceeds to charity. CNN didn't
respond to Trump's request.